Getting your diet on track is much easier if you use a few tips to keep yourself in check! If you're just starting your fitness journey, these are tips you can use to keep you moving forward. If you're well down the road to fitness, going back to the basics is a GREAT reminder to keep you moving forward when sometimes you can stray a bit and get "sloppy".

Here are a few hints on how to start on your journey to healthier, more mindful eating: 1) Rearrange your kitchen cabinets & fridge so that the first foods you see when you open them are the healthiest ones. Take all your fruit and vegetables out of the crisper drawer, put them front & center and put the less healthy stuff in the crisper. 2) Don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry and if you are hungry make your first item a pack of gum so you can chew a piece while you're shopping. Shop the perimeters first, stock up on loads of produce and protein. Try dividing your shopping cart in half (physically put something like a bag or your purse across the middle of your cart). Fill the front half with the good stuff first, load it up. Then put the not-so-good stuff in the back half, keeping the junk food to a minimum or (heaven forbid) not getting any crap at all. 3) When you eat out try having an appetizer and a salad for dinner instead of an entree. If you do get an entree, try asking for a half-size portion for "a reduced price" or having your server box half before they even bring it out to your table. 4) If you have "trigger foods" make them as unattractive and inaccessible as possible. For example, if you have a soda addiction only put one can of soda in the fridge at a time. Ice cold soda, readily available any time at your fingertips? Refreshing! Room temperature soda that hasn't been chilled long enough to be refreshing? Yuk! Is cream your trigger food? Buy the pint instead of the gallon and wrap it in silver foil before you put it in your freezer. If you have to work harder to access it (not just pull it out stick a spoon in it) it may not be as worthwhile. Bottom line: There are all kinds of tricks you can use to make eating healthier seem less like work and more just a natural course of your daily routine. Try applying one of each of the ones I've listed for two weeks (one at a time). By the time #1 is a habit you can bring in #2, let it take hold and so on. And if you want more suggestions after the eight weeks it'll take to apply the above mentioned ones, you know where to find me...